The air quality rating society has never crowned Detroit as the best place to breathe in a nice lung-ful of good air. The White Sox may have taken their last couple gasps of it, coming up sputtering and coughing. With today’s defeat at the hands of the spoiler Tigers, the Sox are now a full six games back of the Twins with 22 to play for both squads. The promising road trip started quite well with the unlikely sweep of the Sawx in Beantown, but these last three in Detroit could turn out to be the killers. The Twins are definitely on a roll, winning 11 of their last 13 and will look to cushion their lead this weekend in Cleveland.

The Sox only real hope is to get a huge boatload of help from those Indians who have six more against the Twins, have the best homestand of the season including sweeping the last set against the Twins and head out to the west coast only trailing by a couple. It’s not out of the question, but with the way Minnesota has been playing, it’s going to be really difficult.

Danks and Floyd need to put in quality starts like they’ve been doing all year, not like the last couple games in Detroit when they were off balance, getting behind in counts and putting the pressure on the offense to come back late. Ozzie and Coop have somehow been able to work through the injuries to the relievers (with a big nod to Chris Sale!), but there’s no more room for error from the starters. On offense, the Sox need to get going early in games because the later it gets, the tighter their bat grips are going to get. When the home plate ump is busy cleaning sawdust off the plate, it’s not good. Manny is not quite being Manny with no extra base hits now in 24 ABs since his arrival. He has been hit four times though, is it too much to ask of the Sox pitchers to play some chin music to someone in the middle of the other team’s order? Just a thought.

It’s going to take quite a bit to make up six with only 22 to go, otherwise the Twins are going to get into coast mode, get some quality time for their prospects and widen the smile of one big lefty gum-chewing DH.